Close Encounters with The Kingston Trio

by Kerry J. Byrnes

Kerry Byrnes OHS'63

The 1960s were big for folk music, and the Kingston Trio led the way. They were the ones who started it all. The music was fresh and alive. College kids loved it and their parents did, too.
 

How big was The Kingston Trio? Big enough that their first nineteen albums not only reached Billboard’s Top 100, but fourteen also entered the top 10, with five albums alone hitting number 1. At their height, The Kingston Trio was arguably the most popular vocal group in the world, having single-handedly ushered in the folk music boom of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Their meteoric rise paved the way for Bob Dylan; Joan Baez/ Peter, Paul and Mary; and the many acts that followed. With the release of their version of ‘Tom Dooley’ in 1958, The Kingston Trio changed American popular music forever, inspiring legions of young listeners to pick up guitars and banjoes and join in hootenannies and sing-alongs  [William J. Bush, Greenback Dollar: The Incredible Rise of The Kingston Trio (2013)].

Original Kingston Trio (Nick Reynolds, Dave Guard, & Bob Shane) (Life, 1959)

The founding members of The Kingston Trio were Bob Shane (Robert Castle Schoen: 2/1/34-present), Nick Reynolds (Nicholas Wells Reynolds: 7/27/33-10/1/08), and Dave Guard (Donald David Guard: 10/19/34-3/22/91).

When Guard left the Trio in late 1960, the Trio recruited John Stewart (John Coburn Stewart: 9/5/39-1/19/08). He continued with the Trio until it briefly disbanded in 1967. Sadly, I never saw either of the two original Trios perform - the Guard Trio or the Stewart Trio. Nor did I ever see or meet Dave Guard.

Thus, my “near miss" encounters with those two Trio groups would be vicarious, taking the form of “close encounters” with later configurations of the Trio.

All these years Shane anchored the Trio until his retirement a few years ago. George Grove (10/9/47-present) has been the principal “second” to Bob Shane during the post-Stewart Trio years. Each time a Trio member passed way (Guard, Stewart, and Reynold) or otherwise left the group, Shane recruited other folk musicians to fill the missing spot in the Trio.

Of those configurations, I had the good fortune to have “close encounters” with Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, and George Grove as well as another Trio member, Bob Haworth (10/9/46-present) who formerly was with The Brothers Four. Also, at a tribute concert for the Kingston Trio, I saw John Stewart perform. More on these Trio "close encounters" in a future post.

Over the years, I collected all The Kingston Trio LPs and then the CD reissues of those albums. My passion for The Kingston Trio’s music took root during my teenage years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. My earliest Kingston Trio memory was hearing their most popular songs (e.g., “MTA” and “Tom Dooley”) on the radio.

But I really didn’t begin to pay attention to the Trio and follow their music until the early 1960s when I attended a Boy Scout summer camp. One counselor had a record player and campers listened over and over to two of the Trio’s early albums.

During my senior year in high school, before our family moved to the Philippines where my father (Francis C. Byrnes) would join the staff of the International Rice Research Institute, my dad took me to the home of one of his Michigan State University colleagues, Don Wells (Donald Edward Wells: 6/3/26-9/24/03).

Don was a big folk music fan and had collected many LPs of folk music artists such as The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary. That probably planted in me a seed that sprouted into a passion for collecting all of the albums of The Kingston Trio.

In early March of 1963, in route to the Philippines, our family traveled to Beaumont, Texas to visit my father’s sister, Betty Consbruck. That first evening at Aunt Betty’s house I turned on the radio and discovered a station playing folk songs, including the Trio's “Greenback Dollar” from the New Frontier album (issued November 1962) and “The Reverend Mr. Black” from the #16 LP (issued March 1963).

Away from home and in route to a distant new home half way around the world in the Philippines, that music triggered a feeling of nostalgia that resulted in an even greater attachment to The Kingston Trio.

After spending the summer of 1963 in the Philippines, I returned from my new home in Los Baños back to my home town – East Lansing – to start my freshman year at Michigan State.

With some spare cash, I purchased a portable record player and started buying LPs, notably The Kingston Trio’s #16 and Sunny Side! These two LPs were a bridge between my two homes, the former's “The Reverend Mr. Black” was fast rising on the charts when I left the United States for the Philippines in March of 1963. The latter's “Desert Pete” was the Trio’s charting hit when I returned to the U.S. in September of 1963.

As mentioned at the outset, I never saw a live performance of either of the two pre-1968 Trio configurations. However, I've enjoyed all their albums and have seen numerous videos of the two original Trios on the Internet (YouTube) or DVD, especially those with videos of the Trio’s appearances on late 1950s and 1960s television shows.

Best of all were the opportunities I had to see and talk with two of the original pre-1968 Trio members – Bob Shane and Nick Reynolds – when they performed as members of one or another of the post-1968 Kingston Trio groups. More on this in a future extended vignette of my “close encounters” with The Kingston Trio.

Attending live performances of the post-1968 configurations of the Kingston Trio, plus listening to the music of the original Trios on LP and CD and watching videos of those Trios on DVD or YouTube have kept alive the memory of how great was the sound of those original pre-1968 Kingston Trio groups. Often almost duplicated but never quite the same!

Note: An earlier version of this post was contributed to and posted on the website of The Kingston Trio Legacy Project at this link.